`I'd rather not take Prozac': stigma and commodification in antidepressant consumer narratives

This article explores the idea that narrative is the primary vehicle through which antidepressant consumers negotiate their sense of identity and reality. Antidepressant consumers represent a unique consumer culture because of the stigma that society attaches to mental illness. Recent media attention, including direct to consumer (DTC) advertising, appears to decrease the stigma surrounding antidepressant use while at the same time commodifying and branding them for mass consumption. Antidepressant consumers must negotiate the threat of stigma and the threat of commodification through the process of constructing narratives. Exploring the narrative process of identity negotiation reveals how the interconnected cultural processes of stigma and commodification are undergoing historical shifts. Among these shifts are the intensification of branding and an expansion of consumer culture. Implications for health promotion and further research are discussed

Democratic contribution or information for reform? Prevailing and emerging discourses of student voice

While a range of typologies frame and critique the scope, purpose and power relations of different student voice approaches, it is timely to look at the direction that student voice literature has taken in recent years and map dominant discourses in the field. In the article the following questions are addressed: (a) What are the dominant discourses in student voice literature? (b) What are the ways forward, to ensure there is both systemic quality assurance and democratic (if not radical) student participation? The discourses named and interrogated in this article include: governmentality; accountability; institutional transformation and reform; learner agency; personalising learning; radical collegiality; socially critical voice; decolonising voice; and refusal. Consideration is given to the ongoing impetus to position students as consumers and resources for quality control. It is an ongoing concern that student voice projects can miss opportunities for reconfiguring the status of students within democratic schooling partnerships. There is an important role for ongoing and initial teacher education that addresses a politics of voice associated with systemic quality assurance, decolonisation and democracy

Dimensions of Agency in New Generation Learning Spaces: Developing Assessment Capability

In new generation schooling contexts, the interaction of human activity, space, and objects, co- produce spatialised practices. There is the fluid use and continuous re-design of learning spaces, where dynamic socio-material practices support the ongoing and negotiated development of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Links are forged in this article between spatialised practice and student agency. In Aotearoa/New Zealand there is a national policy impetus for all schools to move towards re-designed learning spaces. School leaders are challenged with a mandate to lead pedagogic change to develop assessment capability, in alignment with the redesign of education facilities. Informed by theories of space, the case study research investigates how school leaders conceptualise student agency within flexible learning spaces. School leader interview data are used to generate dimensions of socio-material agency with consideration given to practice. Assessment practices in flexible learning spaces can enable ‘dialogic’, ‘curriculum’, and ‘spatial’ dimensions of agency. Pedagogical practices that support agency in flexible learning spaces are a focal area for ongoing investigation

Revitalizing Urban Waterways: Streams of Environmental Justice

This paper explores how a specific project (creek restoration planning) in a particular place (Syracuse, NY) challenged its proponents to identify best practices for community outreach. Within this watershed, several kinds of social and biophysical problems converged with two environmental justice (EJ) challenges, making for a complex project. We will review how the project proponents planned the project, especially the public participation, in the context of minimal guidance in terms of agreed-upon best practices, and the EJ issues. The outline the project’s impacts, arguing that the highly interactive, process-intensive approach that the proponents adapted was in part, necessitated by the environmental justice issues present in the area. Furthermore, the process-intensive approach they adopted in turn spurred a broad-based understanding of urban watershed dynamics, as wellas a shared discourse, yielding sustained benefits for the area. This paper will highlight the potential of learning through deliberative process (Petts 2006 & 2007) and collaborative learning models in general (Daniels and Walker 1996) with social equity. Efforts to restore and/or revitalize urban creeks, streams, and sloughs are more frequently taking place in poor neighborhoods with highly diverse populations and across multiple jurisdictions. Some examples are Wildcat Creek in North Richmond/San Pablo, California (Riley 1989), South Bronx, NY (Hopkins 2005), Anacostia River (Turner 2002) near Washington, D.C., and Onondaga Creek in central New York (OEI 2008) (Figure 1). In such areas, we may not have agreement as to what should be done and then we have different agencies and priorities, e.g., flood control vs. water quality improvement vs. habitat restoration

Professional Learning on Steroids”: Implications for Teacher Learning Through Spatialised Practice in New Generation Learning Environments.

There is growing interest in innovative educational space design and the relationality of spatialised teaching practices. This paper addresses the characteristics of spatialised professional learning in newly redesigned or purpose built new generation learning environments (NGLE). The case study is situated within Aotearoa/New Zealand context, a country where there has been considerable policy focus and investment in NGLE. Data from principals who have established NGLE in their schooling settings is analysed, with consideration given to the preparation of teachers to take up spatialised practices. The study highlights key characteristics of spatialised PLD practice – fostering spatial literacy; professional cross-pollination; co-teaching and peer coaching; deprivatisation and bespoke professional learning design. The value of this research lies in its contribution to researchers and practitioners in the schooling sector as they consider approaches to professional learning in NGLE

Visual Resource Stewardship Conference: Seeking 20/20 Vision for Landscape Futures Proceedings 2019

The 2019 Visual Resource Stewardship Conference: Seeking 20/20 Vision for Landscape Futures was held in October 27-30, 2019 at the Argonne National Laboratory. Four technical training workshops were offered on the first day of the conference, which was the first time for that format. Seventy-five technical papers and visual case studies were presented over 2-1/2 days with single audience format in the mornings and concurrent sessions in the afternoons. Invited plenary speakers were Andrew Lothian from Australia and Martin “Mike” Pasqualetti from Arizona State University. Presenters were private practitioners, public agency landscape architects, and university faculty and students. The presenters were from the United States, Australia, United Kingdom, and New Zealand. The 2019 conference ended with a session devoted to the need to adequately train a future generation of visual resource practitioners, as this was recognized a was a major concerns of the planning committee while organizing the 2019 conference

Finding Our Way: Urban Waterway Restoration and Participatory Processes

In this paper, we explore some of the challenges encountered in organizing multiple stakeholders for purposes of revitalizing an urban waterway. Drawing primarily from positive experiences with a creek revitalization project in Syracuse, New York, we identify several factors concerning the context and challenges -- both material and social -- that have helped to shape the outcomes. Several of the popular models for engaging stakeholders in waterways projects are discussed, especially as they have been used communities in other parts of the U.S. that have faced related challenges. We seek to identify key points and lessons that can help inform others about participatory processes in communities coping with water-related environmental justice issues

Structure of Si(114) determined by global optimization methods

In this article we report the results of global structural optimization of the Si(114) surface, which is a stable high-index orientation of silicon. We use two independent procedures recently developed for the determination of surface reconstructions, the parallel-tempering Monte Carlo method and the genetic algorithm. These procedures, coupled with the use of a highly-optimized interatomic potential for silicon, lead to finding a set of possible models for Si(114), whose energies are recalculated with ab-initio density functional methods. The most stable structure obtained here without experimental input coincides with the structure determined from scanning tunneling microscopy experiments and density functional calculations by Erwin, Baski and Whitman [Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 687 (1996)].Comment: 19 pages, 5 figure

Calculating Cultural Ecosystem Services as Part of Greenspace Management?

Lake related greenspace provides many benefits to residents and visitors, which are often under-valued. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Project (2005) proposed the valuation of ecosystem services, defined as regulatory, provisional, ecosystem support and cultural services provided for us by nature, free of charge. The challenge here is: How can we use cultural ecosystem services derived from scenic landscapes for greenspace management and assessment? Cultural ecosystem services received international recognition as part of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Project (2005). Also, as part of ecosystems services, are regulatory, provisional and ecosystem support. For this paper we are particularly concerned with cultural services, which include recreation, science and education, spiritual/historic as well as aesthetic functions. De Groot et al (2002) and Farber et al (2006) offer a progression of description of cultural Ecosystem services. De Groot et al (2002) describes Information functions as including; aesthetic information, recreation, cultural artistic information and spiritual/historic information. Farber et al (2005) for cultural services include; aesthetic, recreation, science/education, and spiritual/historic functions. This paper presents ecosystem cultural services related to water based scenic landscape resources and then applies it to an Upstate New York lake landscape. A very careful accounting of greenspace ecosystem services is presented as they are applied to lakeshore residents, village residents and town/watershed residents and lake greenspace users utilizing user benefit calculations to yield over 10.6 million dollars of benefits per year (Smardon 2018)